The Analysis of Verbal Behavior

2012, 28, 7382

Grammatical Constructions in Typical Developing Children:

Effects of Explicit Reinforcement, Automatic Reinforcement
and Parity
Leni stvik, Svein Eikeseth, and Lars Klintwall,
Oslo and Akershus University College
This study replicated and extended Wright (2006) and Whitehurst, Ironsmith, and Goldfein (1974) by
examining whether preschool aged children would increase their use of passive grammatical voice rather
than using the more age-appropriate active grammatical construction when the former was modeled by
an adult. Results showed that 5 of the 6 participants began using the passive voice after this verbal
behavior had been modeled. For 3 of the participants, this change was large. The change occurred even
though the adult model explicitly rewarded the participant with praise and stickers for using the active
voice, while providing no praise or stickers for using the passive form that was modeled. For 1
participant, the modeling procedure had no effect on use of the passive voice. These results indicate a
strong automatic reinforcement effect of achieving parity with the grammatical structures used by adults,
compared to the effects of explicit reinforcement by the adult. This might help to explain why children
acquire grammatical structures prevalent in their language community apparently without explicit
instruction.
Key words: verbal behavior, modeling, automatic reinforcement, parity, children, imitation

Skinner (1957) defined language or verbal

behavior as an operant behavior that is
reinforced through the mediation of other
persons (p. 2). This refers to a functional
relationship between behavior of the speaker
and conditions in the speakers social environment. For verbal behavior to emerge,
operant verbal responses must be reinforced
by the verbal community (Skinner, 1957). An
important question is how this reinforcement
occurs.
Researchers have observed that children
seem to acquire many language skills apparently in the absence of explicit instruction or
explicit reinforcement, and this has been
taken to contradict Skinners analysis of
verbal behavior. Brown and Hanlon (1970)
presented data showing that although parents
often give feedback on some aspects of
their childrens speech, other aspects are seldom instructed. Specifically, parents tend to
provide positive and negative consequences

for the content of the statements (e.g.,

naming objects and actions correctly) while
accepting many errors in grammar and
pronunciation.
Although this argument was weakened by
the work of Moerk (1983), who re-analyzed
Brown and Hanlons (1970) data and showed
that their analysis overlooked many subtle
contingencies of reinforcement, Moerk was
not able to refute Brown and Hanlons
general conclusion. There are several examples of grammatical distinctions that cannot
plausibly be explained by a history of explicit
reinforcement. This is simply because most
adults are unaware of them. That is, adults
respect certain regularities in word order
without being able to tact those regularities
(Palmer, 1998).
Chomsky (1980) asserted that a special,
innate linguistic device accounted for how
grammar and other important linguistic skills
were acquired in the absence of direct
instruction. Although Chomskys theory
could explain how children are able to speak
grammatically without explicit reinforcement, and proposed that this type of neural
module was established through the process
of evolution, the theory suffers from a major
problem: It must address how contingencies of
survival can select grammatical distinctions.

This study is based on a thesis submitted by the

first author to the Graduate Faculty of Akershus
University College in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of master of science.
Address correspondence to Svein Eikeseth,
Oslo and Akershus University College, P.O. Box
4, St.Olavs plass, N-0130 Oslo, Norway. (e-mail:
svein.eikeseth@hioa.no).

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Leni stvik et al.

What precisely has been selected and which

evolutionary contingences might have selected
them (Palmer, 1996).
In Skinners analysis, the apparent missing
source of reinforcement is automatic reinforcement, arising from the child conforming
to the behavior of a verbal model. An
automatic reinforcer is related to the response
in such a way that it is produced directly
by the response (Catania, 2007; Novak &
Pelaez, 2004; Vaughan & Michael, 1982).
In other words, reinforcement that is not
mediated by the action of another person.
This can be illustrated with an example. A
girl who hears and sees her big sister whistle
will very likely want to whistle as well. She
will exhale air and try to shape her mouth the
same way as her big sister does. Initially,
she will not be able to produce anything
resembling the whistling of her model, but
gradually, after repeated attempts, the first
whistling sounds appear, and the produced sound is likely a powerful reinforcer. If
the girl continues to practice whistling,
sometimes producing a good imitation and
sometimes not, differential and automatic
reinforcement will shape her behavior into
skilled whistling.
This example illustrates how imitation and
automatic reinforcement might play an
important role in the acquisition of verbal
behavior. It must be emphasized that this
type of imitation is not an echoic verbal
behavior, because the verbal response is not
produced in immediate temporal relationship
to the verbal stimulus (Skinner, 1957, p. 164).
Skinner discussed these issues in his book
Verbal Behavior (e.g., Skinner, 1957, pp. 58,
357), including the following:
Automatic reinforcement may shape the
speakers behavior. When, as a listener,
a man acquires discriminative responses
to verbal forms, he may reinforce
himself for standard forms and extinguish deviant behavior. Reinforcing
sounds in the childs environment provide for the automatic reinforcement of
vocal forms. . . . The child can then
reinforce himself automatically for the
execution of vocal patterns which are
later to become part of his verbal
behavior. At this stage the child resembles a parrot, which is also automatically
reinforced when its vocal productions
match something heard in the environment. A similar effect may lead to a

special manner of speaking or to particular forms of response characteristic of

the behavior of others. The effect is
often called identification, but we have
no need to appeal to a special process
here. The listener usually finds certain
speakers particularly reinforcing, either
because what is said is reinforcing, or
because the speakers are reinforcing in
other ways. Parents, favorite employers,
persons of prestige, and close friends are
examples. Since, for one reason or
another, it is often reinforcing to hear
such people speak, it is automatically
reinforcing to speak as they speakwith
a particular intonation, mannerism, or
favorite vocabulary. Terms characteristic of the adult repertoire are likely to be
used by children with special frequency
when first acquired. This is not echoic
behavior, because the borrowed response is not emitted in the proper
temporal relation to the verbal stimulus.
The borrowing occurs because of the
automatic self-reinforcement generated
by the speaker as a result of his earlier
conditioning as a listener. (Skinner,
1957, p. 164)

Palmer (1996) used the term parity to

describe how a speaker who is already a
competent listener can detect when he or she
confirms or deviates from the practice of the
verbal community, and hence regulates his or
her verbal behavior to match the modeled
behavior. Children usually are competent
listeners before they reach the same level as
a speaker, and thus they are able to detect
even slight differences in verbal utterances
(Horne & Lowe, 1996). This means that
children can tell whether their own utterances
conform or deviate from that of a model. To
achieve parity in ones verbal behavior might
be a strong generalized reinforcer because
achieving parity is highly adaptive in most
situations, and not conforming is often
punished by the verbal community (Smith,
Michael, & Sundberg, 1996; Sundberg,
Michael, Partington, & Sundberg, 1996).
The behavior analytic interpretation of
language acquisition is thus based on two
types of reinforcement. First, verbal behavior
is, in part, explicitly reinforced by members
of the verbal community. Second, verbal
behavior is, in part, automatically reinforced
when the speaker hears him/herself speaking
in accordance with verbal conventions.
To test the parity hypothesis one could
demonstrate that children can acquire novel

PARITY AND EXPLICIT REINFORCEMENT

grammatical conventions in the absence of or
in conflict with explicit reinforcement. Given
that it is unusual in the verbal behavior of
children in many languages, the sentence
structure called the passive voice is an
ideal candidate for such a demonstration.
The passive voice is when the object in a
sentence is put before the agent of the verb,
such as in Caesar was murdered by Brutus.
The passive voice construction can be thought
of as the opposite of the active voice
construction, an example of which is Brutus
murdered Caesar. Several developmental
studies have investigated the use of verbs in
the passive voice construction (cf., Allen &
Crago, 1996; Demuth, 1989; Marchman,
Bates, Burkardt, & Good, 1991; Trosborg,
1982). The passive voice debut varies widely
across different language communities. For
instance, studies on Inuit children have
indicated that they start using the passive
voice at the age of 2 years (Allen & Crago,
1996), while studies on Hebrew-speaking
children have indicated that they begin using
the passive voice at the age of 8 (Berman,
1985). The explanation for this might be that
the passive voice is widely used in the Inuit
language, while it is quite rare in Hebrew.
Whitehurst, Ironsmith, and Goldfein (1974)
investigated the acquisition of the passive
voice as a model for how verbal behavior is
acquired. Six normally developing Englishspeaking children between the ages 4 and
5 years were exposed to five sessions during
which they listened to an adult describing a set
of drawings using the passive voice. Next, the
children were asked to describe a mix of the
same stimuli and novel but similar stimuli. All
participants produced sentences in the passive
voice to describe at least some of the novel
stimuli. The experiment included a control
group that did not hear the passive voice
modeled by the adult. These children produced no sentences in the passive voice when
describing any of the drawings.
In a similar study, Wright (2006) included 6
English-speaking participants aged 3 and a
half to 5 and a half years. The participants
completed 6 phases, the first of which was a
baseline phase in which children were asked
to describe drawings of two animals involved
in an activity (e.g., a dog brushing a cat).
Phases 2 and 4 were modeling phases, during
which the experimenter modeled a description

75

of the first stimulus in pair of drawings, using

the passive voice (e.g., the mouse is being
pulled by the elephant to describe a drawing
of an elephant pulling a mouse). The participant was then asked to describe the second
drawing in the same pair, which depicted the
same animals and the same action with the
roles reversed (i.e., a drawing of a mouse
pulling an elephant). The experimenter verbally
praised use of the active voice but never use of
the passive voice. Phases 3 and 5 were test
phases, during which the participants were
asked to describe novel stimuli without any
modeling. In the sixth phase the participants
were asked to describe the same drawings that
had been used in the baseline phase. The results
showed that participants began to use the
passive voice only after the experimenter had
modeled this verbal behavior. The results also
indicated that the use of the passive voice
increased in frequency after repeated modeling.
Note that the participants were specifically not
reinforced by the experimenter for using the
passive voice, and it might thus be assumed that
the behavior of the participants was automatically reinforced for parity with a model.
The present study was designed to systematically replicate Wright (2006). This was done
by assessing the extent to which the results of
the study could be replicated in a new sample
from a different verbal community (Norwegian-speaking children). In addition, the present
study assessed the childrens use of the active
voice and undefined verbal behavior in addition
to assessing the passive voice. The present
study also included explicit tangible consequences for the non-modeled behavior, in order
to compare the relative effects of (a) achieving
parity with the behavior of a model and (b)
tangible consequences.
If it can be shown that children acquire
novel grammatical forms with only manipulation of the antecedent stimuli (the model
behavior) then this would support the behavior analytic interpretation of how children
acquire language (Smith, Michael, & Sundberg, 1996).
METHOD
Participants
Seven Norwegian-speaking, preschoolaged children participated in the study.

Leni stvik et al.

76

Table 1
Participants Sex and Chronological Age
Participant
Eskil
Henny
Simon
Amanda
David
Frode

Sex

Age (year, months)

M
F
M
F
M
M

4,6
4,6
4,0
4,3
3,5
5,5

Inclusion criteria were as follows: (a) chronological age between 3 and 6 years, and (b)
no reported history of developmental delays.
The participants were recruited from the
kindergarten they attended and were, according to the staff, typically developing. Parents
of all children in the kindergarten class
received information about the experiment
and parents of 12 of the 15 children in the
class gave their written consent for participation. The experiment was conducted in one
session lasting for approximately 30 minutes.
All children with parental consent who
attended the kindergarten at the day of the
experiment participated. The participants
age and sex is shown in Table 1. If a
participant in any way expressed or indicated
that he or she wanted to quit, the experiment
was terminated and the participant was
returned to the other children with the toy
and stickers earned.
Setting and Materials
The experiment was conducted in a room
at the kindergarten. The room was used
for music lessons and contained a piano,
a blackboard, a table, several chairs, and a
sofa. Placed on the table were stickers, a
plastic sheet (14 3 19 cm) with 20 dots on
which the stickers could be placed, an mp3recording device, and three sets of drawings
on cards (10 3 15 cm). The first two sets of
drawingsthe test set and the training set
included 20 drawings each (40 pictures in
total). Each set of 20 drawings consisted of
10 pairs. Every pair of drawings depicted two
animals involved in an activity. In one of the
drawings in the pair, animal X was doing
something to animal Y, and in the other
drawing in the pair, animal Y was doing the

Figure 1. A pair of pictures from the training set.

Picture A would be described in the active voice
as The elephant is pulling the mouse. In
passive voice A would be described as: The
mouse is being pulled by the elephant. Picture B
would be described in the active voice as The
mouse is pulling the elephant and in the passive
voice as The elephant is being pulled by the
mouse.

same thing to animal X (see Figure 1). The

third set, the generalization set, consisted of
17 pictures depicting animals involved in an
activity. The activities were the same as in
the training and test and training sets, but one
of the animals was substituted with another
one (also taken from the test or training sets)
(see Figure 2). The drawings in all sets were
the same as those used in Wright (2006),
except for the generalization set. For this set,
new drawings were made based on the
descriptions from Wright.
Dependent Variable and Reliability
The dependent variable was the verbal
behavior of the children, coded into three
categories; passive voice, active voice, and
undefined, as follows:
Passive voice was defined as any of the
following sentences: (a) A sentence in the
passive voice (i.e., X is being done something to by Y, e.g., the elephant is being
pushed by the mouse) in which both subject
and object in the drawing are named correctly;

PARITY AND EXPLICIT REINFORCEMENT

77

Undefined Verbal Behavior. Any other

verbal behavior or lack thereof was scored as
undefined. The two latter categories (Active
and Undefined) were not used by Wright
et al. (2006).
Inter-rater agreement was calculated for all
participants using the records of two independent observers. Point-by-point agreement
was calculated by dividing the number of
agreements by the sum of agreements and
disagreements and multiplying the outcome
by 100. The mean total inter-rater agreement
was 98.9% (range 98.6% to 100.0%).
Procedure

Figure 2. A pair of pictures from the generalization set. These drawings depict the same activity
as those in Figure 1. The elephant in drawing A
has been replaced with a panda bear, and the
mouse in drawing B has been replaced with a
sheep.

(b) a sentence that is structured in the passive

voice, but the speaker reverses the naming of
the subject and object; (c) a sentence that is
structured in the passive voice, but the same
animal is named as both subject and object; and
(d) a sentence that is structured in the passive
voice, but in which the actor is omitted. If the
participant named the animal as a similar but
different species, such as naming a zebra as a
horse or naming a moose as a deer, this was
considered correct. This definition of the
passive voice is identical to the one used by
Wright et al. (2006).
Active voice was defined as any of the
following sentences: (a) A sentence containing the active voice (e.g., the mouse is
pushing the elephant) in which both subject
and object in the drawing is named correctly;
(b) a sentence that is structured in the active
voice, but the speaker reverses the naming of
the subject and object; (c) a sentence that is
structured in the active voice, but the same
animal is named as both subject and object;
and (d) a sentence that is structured in the
active voice, but in which the actor is
omitted.

The experiment started when the participant was seated in the sofa in front of the
table and across from the experimenter. The
participant was given a toy and asked
whether he or she would like to stay and
play a game and earn stickers. If the child
preferred to leave the experiment, he or she
would still get the toy. All participants
stayed, and they were shown the stickers
that could be earned during the experiment.
A total of 20 stickers could be earned. Except
during the baseline phase, when no feedback
was given, stickers and praise were delivered
contingent upon use of the active voice to
describe the drawings. Praise or stickers
were never given when the participant used
the modeled passive voice, or when the
participant produced an undefined response.
Instead, whenever a participant used the
passive voice or produced an undefined
response, the experimenter said in a neutral
voice, Now lets look at the next drawing,
and went on to the next stimulus.
Initially, the experimenter told the participant
that he or she would be shown some drawings,
and that the participant and the experimenter
would take turns describing them. Throughout
all 6 phases, each participant was shown a total
of 74 pictures. The experimenter always used
the passive voice to describe the stimuli. At
the end of the experiment, participants who had
not received all 20 stickers were given the
remaining stickers.
Phase 1: Baseline using the test set. When
the experiment began, the participant was
given the following instructions: I would
like you to tell me about some drawings that I
will show you. The experimenter showed

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Leni stvik et al.

the first stimulus in each pair of the test set,

and gave the instruction: Tell me about this
picture. If participants only named the
animals on the picture, the experimenter
said, What are they doing? If participants
did not answer at all, the experimenter said,
Do you know what these animals are
called? and then named the animals for
the child. A total of 10 drawings were shown
during baseline (saving the second drawing
in each pair for the final generalization
phase), and the experimenter gave only
neutral feedback (such as humming and
giving a slight nod) regardless of what
answers the participant produced.
Phase 2: Modeling the passive voice using
the training set. During the second phase, the
passive voice was modeled. First, the experimenter presented the participant with the
first drawing of the training set and described
it by using the passive voice. For example,
the experimenter showed the participant the
drawing exhibited in the top panel of
Figure 1 and said: The mouse is pulled by
the elephant. The picture was held in front
of the child for 10 seconds after which the
experimenter said, Great, you waited your
turn, and removed the picture. If the
participant tried to imitate the experimenter
during the 10-second-interval, the experimenter told the participant not to say
anything before it was his/her turn. After
two seconds, the experimenter presented the
second stimulus in the pair (see lower panel
of Figure 1) and told the participant; Now
its your turn, tell me about this picture. All
20 drawings in the training set were presented in this phase; one drawing of the pair was
modeled by the experimenter, whereas the
other drawing of the pair was described by
the participants.
Praise and stickers were presented contingent on the participant waiting his or her
turn and using the active voice when describing the drawings. The experimenter never
praised or delivered any stickers if the
participant used the passive voice, nor did
the experimenter in any way indicate that the
passive voice was the sought-after response.
Phase 3: Testing the passive voice using
the generalization set. During Phase 3, the
use of the active and passive voices in
response to the pictures in the generalization
set was assessed. The participants were

shown a drawing and given the instructions:

Tell me about this picture. The experimenter waited 10 seconds for the participant
to respond. After a 2-second-pause the next
stimulus was presented. Rewards were provided by the same criteria as described in
Phase 2. The participant was shown a total of
17 pictures during this phase.
Phase 4: Modeling the passive voice using
the training set. Phase 4 was identical to
Phase 2.
Phase 5: Testing the passive voice using
the generalization set. Phase 5 was identical
to Phase 3.
Phase 6: Testing the passive voice using
the test set. During Phase 6, the use of the
active and passive voices in response to
drawings from the test set was assessed. The
experimenter presented the second (and
novel) drawing from the pairs in the test set
and asked participants to describe it. Each
participant described a total of 10 pictures.
The procedure for reinforcement was the
same as in the other phases.
Procedural Integrity
The experimenter kept, during the entire
experiment, a laminated sheet with a description of the experimental procedure and
the instructions to be given to the participants. This was done to ensure that the
experiment was carried out according to the
protocol. All drawings had the correct
description, in the passive voice, printed on
the back side of the card. This ensured a
correct passive voice modeling of the drawings during the training phases, and helped
the experimenter provide correct feedback
and correct scoring of the participants
responses.
To assess procedural integrity, the audio
recordings of Phase 2 for the second
participant, Phase 3 for the third participant
and Phase 4 for the fourth participant were
scored for procedural integrity. Scoring was
based on whether the experimenter produced
the correct instructions to the participant in
the beginning of each phase, whether the
experimenter described the drawings in
accordance with what was written on the
back of each picture, whether the experimenter gave the correct instructions, and
whether the experimenter gave feedback in

PARITY AND EXPLICIT REINFORCEMENT

79

Figure 3. Percentage of responses in the passive voice across phases for each participant.

accordance with the contingency described

above. Procedural integrity was found to be
97%, containing only one error: once a
participant was given praise following use
of the passive voice.
RESULTS
One participant in the study left the experimental room after completing baseline, and
hence was excluded from data analysis. The
remaining six children completed the experiment in its entirety. Percentage use of passive
voice across all phases for each participant is
shown in Figure 3. As can be seen, no
participant used the passive voice during
baseline.
Results for Eskil are shown in Figure 3
and Table 2. During baseline, Eskil used the
passive voice on 0% of the trials (he used
100% active voice). In the subsequent
training phase, he used passive voice on
80% of the trials (20% active voice). In the
first test phase (Phase 3) the passive voice
was used in 53% of the trials (41% active
voice). In the second training phase (Phase 4)
the passive voice was used on 100% of the
trials, and in the next test phase (Phase 5) the
passive voice was used for 59% of the trials
(35% active voice), and in the final generalization phase the participant used the passive
voice in 70% of the trials (30% active voice).
The results for Simon and Frode were similar

to that of Eskil (see Figure 3 and Table 2),

and hence, the verbal behavior of Eskil,
Simon, and Frode appeared to be affected by
the modeling condition.
David, by contrast, failed to use the
passive voice throughout the experiment
(see Figure 3). As shown in Table 2, David
used the active voice on 40% of the trials
during baseline, and undefined responding
during the remaining 60% of the baseline
trials. During the two subsequent training
phases (2 and 4), David used the active voice
on 80% of the trials, and during the final
generalization phase he used the active voice
on 100% of the trials. As can be seen in
Figure 3 and Table 2 the results of Henny
and Amanda were similar to that of David,
though both Henny and Amanda began using
some use of the passive voice. Hence, the
verbal behavior of David appeared unaffected by the modeling condition, whereas the
modeling condition had some effect on the
verbal behavior of Henny and Amanda.
DISCUSSION
This study replicated and extended Wright
(2006) and Whitehurst et al. (1974) by examining whether preschool-aged children would
increase their use of the passive grammatical
voice when it was modeled by an adult, rather
than using the active grammatical construction,
which was explicitly reinforced.

Leni stvik et al.

80

Table 2
Participants Use of Active Voice and Undefined Verbal Behavior Across Phases as
Percentage of Trials
Active voice/Undefined verbal behavior
Participants

Baseline

Modeling

Test

Modeling

Test

Generalization

Eskil
Henny
Simon
Amanda
David
Frode

100/0
80/20
100/0
80/20
40/60
80/20

20/0
80/0
60/0
100/0
80/20
30/10

41/6
65/0
82/0
94/0
35/65
82/6

0/0
70/0
20/0
80/0
80/20
10/0

35/6
76/0
18/0
6/0
65/35
65/12

30/0
80/0
10/0
100/0
100/0
40/0

Results showed that 5 of the 6 participants

began using the passive voice after this
verbal behavior had been modeled. For 3 of
the children this change was large and
persistent into the final generalization phase.
The modeling procedure had a limited effect
on the verbal behavior of 2 of the participants, who continued to use the active voice
on most of the trials though they sometimes
also used the passive voice. Finally, 1
participant never used the passive voice.
During baseline he used 60% undefined
responding and 40% active voice, and during
the final generalization phase he used 100%
active voice. Hence, he increased the use of
the active voice (rather than the modeled
passive voice) over the course of the
experiment.
In the final generalization phase of the
experiment, the participants were asked to
describe drawings in which the previous
animals and actions were presented in new
combinations. The drawings in the generalization set were different from the drawing in
the training and test sets as follows: The
training and test sets consisted of pairs of
animal X doing something to animal Y, and
then with the roles reversed. The generalization set consisted of animals and actions from
the earlier sets but with a new object animal.
The object animals was also taken from the
training and test sets, but had not been
combined with that agent animal or action.
During the final generalization phase, 4 of the
participants generated new sentences in the
passive voice, suggesting that the increase or
establishment of the passive voice was a
matter of learning an autoclitic or intraverbal
frame, rather than simple imitation.

The main question of the study was to

investigate whether children could learn a
novel verbal behavior with the manipulation
of antecedents only, not consequences. The
increase of the use of the passive voice is
indicative that this was the case, but is
limited by the possible explanation that the
children already had this grammatical frame
in their repertoire and that the modeling only
increased the strength of that frame. Simply
put, it cannot be determined empirically from
the present study whether the increase in
the use of the passive voice was a matter
of acquisition of novel behavior, or only a
matter of strengthening existing verbal behavior. Either way, the results suggest that
the verbal behavior of children is affected by
the verbal behavior of a speaker, presumably
through automatic reinforcement and parity.
A limitation of this study was that it lacked
a control group. Hence, maturation and
reactivity of the probes may be confounding
variables that cannot be ruled out empirically. However, it is unlikely that maturation
could account for the change observed in the
participants verbal behavior, since the experiment was conducted in one session, and
since all participants failed to use the passive
voice during baseline despite varying in age
from 3 years, 5 months to 5 years, 5 months.
Also, it is unlikely that reactivity of testing
could account for the acquisition of the
passive voice since the participants were
rewarded for using the active voice. Also,
Whitehurst et al. (1974) included a notreatment control group in their study, and
none of the participants in the control group
used the passive voice at any point over the
course of the experiment. This observed

PARITY AND EXPLICIT REINFORCEMENT

stability of the active voice occasioned the
design of the present study. Alternatively,
a single-case design, such as a multiple
baseline design, could have been used.
Interestingly, the 3 participants for whom
the modeling condition had the largest effect
were on average 6 months older than the
other 3 children. It is possible that for these
children, the automatic reinforcement produced by achieving parity had higher valence
than the praise and stickers given contingent
on use of the active voice. For the younger
children, the opposite could have been the
case. However, it should be noted that no
reinforcer assessment was conducted on the
stickers or the praise. It is possible, though
unlikely, that neither stickers nor praise
functioned as reinforcers for some of the
participating children. Another possibility
is that delivery of praise and reinforcers
contingent on turn-taking lead to satiation for
these stimuli as reinforcers.
Future studies could investigate the extent
to which participants would use the passive
voice, after modeling, on novel drawings in
which neither subjects nor activities had been
previously modeled. Future studies could
also model other grammatical frames than
the passive voice. This could be frames that
do not exist or are extremely unusual, such as
Murdered by Brutus, Caesar or Brutus
Caesar murdered. Another possibility is to
model an artificial pronunciation of a familiar word. If such artificial verbal responses
can be established in the verbal behavior of
children, this would suggest that certain
aspects of language indeed can be learned
through automatic reinforcement and parity.
This study highlights the need to consider
both explicit social reinforcement as well as
automatic reinforcement when studying the
acquisition of verbal behavior.
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